Posts

I'm doing a little bit more every day. Alright, yes it has been a bit since I posted on the "crazy nines" project or the collection
in general, so I'm posting a general post. First, I'm opening up my baseball card storage room
again. With so many 1989 cards - Donruss, Fleer, Topps Standard, Topps Big, Topps Bowman, Score - left to sort that will be going to SO many binders (at least ten binders for just Topps 1989 Standard), I will not
have room for these binders in my Cubs baseball card room. The problem with this other room is very poor lighting,
so I'm looking at options. I'm thinking that I will possibly put up LED strip lighting on the shelves. Of course I will need a way to turn this on and off. I'll probably start hanging some of favorite Cardinals and White Sox stuff in the Cubs Room. I guess it would no longer be a Cubs room though. But I'll post more updates on that stuff.

I am still working on Topps 1989 cards and putting them in binders. I try to do some cards everyday. Sooner or later, it will become less daunting as more and more cards become organized. With three boxes to go through, I have a while to get there.

I also wanted to take a moment to announce that I created a new video to highlight my baseball card room.

I also feel my website (
http://mrgibson.com
) might be a little misleading with people thinking I have most of my Cubs cards cataloged and that could be further from the truth. I really want to get back to cataloging all my Cubs baseball cards with currently 1,753 cataloged as of writing this. Further more, I'm really curious what my new current count of Ryne Sandberg cards are.

I have renamed the Topps 1989 project the Crazy 9s projects. I'm at a stopping point. I have pressed as far as I could without buying supplies. At minimum, I need new 9 card sheets. I can't really go out to the card stores and get these. I'm wondering how bad I wish to purchase these online with shipping and taxes. So to sum up the collection configuration and naming.
Each binder will have 9 pages of 9 cards per page with 9 copies of each page for the year 89.
At this moment, I'm 100% sure I have 2 complete sets of 1989 Topps. I'm 95% sure I have three complete sets. 85% sure I have 4 complete sets. After that, I'm not sure at all how likely I have 5 or more. Although I'm not hopeful that I have 9 complete sets, I'm still proceeding as I do.

At the end of day 3 on the 1989 Topps project, I'm still no where near being done or even close to half way. What I am close to is running out of storage material. I need to purchase more sheets and binders and will be out tomorrow.

Additionally, after day 3 I have come to the conclusion that I will *probably* have 4 full sets and 4 mostly complete sets. But as they say, time will tell with my progress of this major sorting and cataloging project. I'm considering storing these sets in volumes instead of a set per binder. I would think this would make finding the card you are looking for much easier.

OK, I have started day two of this project and I guess I can say it is going fairly well. One binder almost done.

Update: 7/May/2020
After a couple of days working on this, I'm proceeding as if I have 5 complete sets of 1989 Topps. I may have to bump up to 6 complete sets. I already almost have 1 complete set in binder. Just after 2 days of rummaging through just 2K of these cards, it is becoming obvious which cards are common and what cards were more scarce. It is feels like this was something that Topps did on purpose. I still have 3 1/3 dual row boxes of 1989s I have not even touched yet. I'm finding this actually really fun and when I'm done, I will know exactly how many 1989 cards I have without manually and randomly cataloging them.

Update again: 7/May/2020
OK, that has escalated fast :) I am currently treating this as I am completing 8 full 1989 Topps sets. I still have a long way to go with this project. Yet the more I work on this, the more I am convinced T…

I have just acquired many of a thousand baseball cards. Basically, someone else's whole collection. I have already been cataloging the obvious wholes in my collection with these newly acquired cards. But now I'm going to stop (pause) cataloging. I have a new sub project. I'm guessing I probably owned two or three complete 1989 Topps sets. Now I think I'v have added at least that many again. With that many cards of just 1989 Topps, it is a little overwhelming. So I though about how to approach this and came to the conclusion of binders. I know I have written that I would never go to binders again, but I think this would be the easiest and less space consumption way of handling this. So I'm going to literally fill up 4-6 binders in number order with 1989 Topps. I probably only keep on set and set the other sets off. This of course will take quite a bit on time and thus the pause in cataloging.

MrGibson.com has been completely redesigned over the weekend. I wanted to look more modern while improving usability and layout. New icons to give an idea to areas functions. Lighter colors that are hopefully easier on the eyes. More compressed view when possible. I also removed broken functionality when found. There are some similarities to previous designs and layouts.

I am very fond of 1981 in baseball card collecting. that was the second year as a youngster I was purchasing cards as a collector. I was thrilled that my Uncle's convenience store next to my grandmother was selling 1981 Donruss baseball cards. What was unique about the Donruss is they put the year of the card right on the front of the card, unlike what Topps or Fleer had ever done.

Visual comparison with photo of cards in my collection.
All cards shown are from my personal collection.

Cards as shown
Left: Topps / Center: Fleer / Right: Donruss
The year 1981 was the first time in baseball card history that there were three sets of baseball cards from which to choose: Topps, Fleer, and Donruss.
Topps issued a large set of 726 Cards. The green wax packs contained 15 cards and one piece of gum.
Fleer issued a large set of 660 Cards. The read wax packs contained 17 cardsand one piece of gum. .
Donruss issued an unexpectedly large set, although smaller than Topps or Fleer, …

Another one of these, "I don't know why", but the 1981 Fleers set has always been on of my favorite sets. Easily beating both Topps that year, although both designs are very similar (baseball hat vs. baseball). It is not like I hate the 1981 Topps, but Fleer is just better that year.

The information I'm trying to relay is that my Cubs 1981 Fleer set is complete with all 25 cards and a total of 27 (two duplicates). This makes me fairly happy in that I love this set so much. My White Sox 1981 Fleer set is at 6 cards (two duplicates).
My Cardinals 1981 Fleer set is at 2 cards. Lastly, my Red Sox 1981 Fleer set is at 3 cards. This brings my 1981 Fleer set to a total of 90 cards. Compare that to my Fleer sets?
1,463 1989 Fleer cards
819 1990 Fleer cards
707 1991 Fleer cards
668 1988 Fleer cards
90 1981 Fleer cards
My other recent purchase is that I have also mostly completed my 2003 Topps Cubs set with 22 cards.
This leaves me the following years witho…

Still no baseball games of any sort [sob]. Just playing various baseball video games and going through my baseball card collection.

As far as my baseball card collection. As almost always focusing on Cubs Team sets. I just need 2002 and 2003 Topps Cubs team sets to fill my team shelves (and about 15 more bins to put the rest of the sets in). Looking now at how to acquire these for the best price/quality.
I am not sold on the 2002 Topps. Although a very interesting design, I am considering the 2002 Fleer as a replacement for Topps 2002. Why? Simply because it is a better looking set. My opinion of course, but I think the blue on blue looks awesome.
Additional goals, I'm also looking to complete my 1981 Fleer and Topps for Cubs and White Sox. 1981 Topps is almost complete and need quite a few for Fleer.
http://mrgibson.com/baseballp.php?year=1981
Also I need 5 more cards for my 1983 Topps Cubs. I'm lucky to have the 9 core cards.
http://mrgibson.com/baseballp.php?y…

I don't know why it took so long, but I have completed my 2014 Cubs Team set with 26 cards. Possibly because I have been obsessed with my Cubs 50s and 60s sets. But the fact is I love Topps Standard 2014 cards and the variants. It is truly one of Topps better modern sets.

Topic: Personal
I promised Maddison and Paige I would watch My Hero Academia. It is important for them that I see this show with them, so I'm going to give it a try.

Topic: Baseball Cards
I have moved all my code to point to my internal photo database. I have hundreds of photos up and I'm surprised on how little space it is taking up. Even though I have a fraction of the material up on my site, I will probably start to remove more photos from Flikr now.

Topic: Linux
There has been a very productive stream of development on the FVWM 3 front. I would not be surprised if there is not a Beta put out by the end of February.

Topic: Mustang
If there is one thing I would want to change about my Mustang, it would be the shifting. It is by far not the worst stick I have ever driven (1969 Chevy Camaro was), but it is far from the best. Seriously, that Camaro stick and clutch REALLY sucked. I found a fairly inexpensive short throw for my car at only $90-$110. But once I watched the vi…

Today Derek Jeter was inducted to the Hall of Fame. In addition to now being in the Hall of Fame, he was the Rookie of the Year in 1996. A 14 time All-Star.
Won 5 World Series. 5 Gold Gloves. 5 Silver Slugger. World Series MVP and All-Star MVP

Why am I reposting about my 1960s Topps?
Because I have made some significant adds this Winter including now having all of Billy Williams Cubs cards. See billy cards
Because I have written multiple applications to look at these team sets.See all Cubs cards

On a personal level, I'm starting a new diet. Like in the past with health related stuff, I may log on my blog. I'm at 242 (as of tonight) and shooting for at least to go down to 210 - if not 200.

On a baseball card collecting level, I just acquired a 1965 Topps Ron Santo #110 in really great shape. I have all the cards I have been wanting for Topps 65, so I'm happy. That is the 15 primary cards for the Cubs 1965 team set. On the Cubs 1969 team set I picked up Ernie Banks. I possibly will have additional 12 1969 cards soon making the set mostly complete.

For displaying my collection, I added a ton of code to show all the major brands that I collect. I also added additional date logic.

I picked up MLB 09 The Show of my PlayStation 2 this weekend. Pretty fun, although I lost all three games I played so far. :)

First, I forgot to wish a happy New Year! Another year of blogging to come!

Secondly, I have found it interesting that Flickr is claiming they are in financial trouble if they don't get more paying members. And here I'm saying I'm tired of Flickr and making my own replacement. I did start this before Flickr made their announcement. I continue to photograph completely over ad I added it to my site.

I have a working protocol. Currently it only uses three parameters (year, year1, year2), but I have more planned (team, brand). Currently the script defaults to Cubs and Topps.